Ron Dennis has been forced to stand down as chairman and chief executive of McLaren, bringing to an end his 35-year involvement with the Formula One team.
The 69-year-old relinquished his duties at the team, who are the sport’s second most successful despite not having won a race for four years, following a decision by the majority shareholders to place him on gardening leave.
“I am disappointed that the representatives of TAG and Mumtalakat, the other main shareholders in McLaren, have forced through this decision to place me on gardening leave, despite the strong warnings from the rest of the management team about the potential consequences of their actions on the business,” he said in a statement yesterday.
“The grounds they have stated are entirely spurious...”
Dennis owns 25 per cent of McLaren Group, while Bahrain’s sovereign wealth fund Mumtalakat owns 50 per cent and Saudi-born businessman Mansour Ojjeh, the CEO of TAG, holds the remaining 25 percent.
Dennis, who has been involved with former champions McLaren since 1980 and is one of F1’s biggest names, stood down as team principal in 2009 but returned as group chief executive in January 2014.
A report last week said that Mumtalakat and Ojjeh wanted to oust Dennis and that an unidentified consortium of Chinese investors had made a £1.65 billion ($2.05 billion) takeover bid for McLaren Technology Group that Dennis supported but the other shareholders opposed.
The report said that Dennis had failed to secure a High Court injunction against a move to sideline him until his contract expired in mid-January, and an emergency board meeting had been convened.
The BBC reported that the other shareholders felt that Dennis’ autocratic style was not suited to growing McLaren in the future, a claim he denied yestersday.
“My management style is the same as it has always been and is one that has enabled McLaren to become an automotive and technology group that has won 20 Formula One world championships and grown into an 850 million pounds a year business,” Dennis said.
“Throughout that time I have worked closely with a series of talented colleagues to keep McLaren at the cutting edge of technology, to whom I’ll always be grateful.
“Ultimately it has become clear to me through this process that neither TAG nor Mumtalakat share my vision for McLaren and its true growth potential.”